


Stop Me If You've Heard This One

by isthemachinesinging



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-24
Updated: 2013-03-24
Packaged: 2017-12-06 07:11:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/732864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isthemachinesinging/pseuds/isthemachinesinging
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Claire, hunting the angel who took her father, is turned by Lenore. They end up in Purgatory together, following a familiar angel and hunter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stop Me If You've Heard This One

A hunter, an angel, and a vampire walk into Purgatory.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one.

 You probably have; this is the story everyone knows. So let me tell you another one: Two vampires walk into Purgatory, one after the other. That one I know you haven’t heard. It’s my story.

I shouldn’t have been here. I was only fifteen. I won’t lie and say my death was unexpected—not the way I’ve been living—but once I would have expected Heaven. My dad believed in Heaven, and God, and angels—for all the good it did him--so by default I did too. When I was thirteen, I found out they were all very real. Sometimes finding out something is real makes it very hard to have faith in it.

That’s me. I had no faith anymore. Not since I was thirteen. Back then I got a little angel in me, and since then I’d been hunting it down. I should tell you, I didn’t know the first thing about how to kill an angel. And I couldn’t tell you a good place to find angels. Just a lot of bad places and dead ends.

We started out travelling together. We were on the run, my mom and I, though neither of us talked about it. Did she think about it in the dead hours of the night? Did she plot her own vengeance against the creature that turned her husband into a puppet? I could not say. I had my own vengeance to plan. I didn’t tell her what I was doing, how in every new place I would go out, watching, trying to pick up clues. Sometimes it felt like we’d just missed him. More often it felt as if he was so far away we might as well be on different planets.

By the time I was fifteen, she’d caught wise. I’d started making hunter contacts, learning from them. No one knew how to trap angels, but that was all right. I still learned from them. And when I said _angels_ , they said _Winchesters_. I smiled my sweetest smile and said thank you and left. If I contacted the Winchesters, it would be over. It was important that they never know I was searching. I did not want the angel to see me coming.

Mom found out about the hunters. She was still a woman of faith, my mom. She decided we were going to settle down, gave me an ultimatum: no more hunters, no more travelling. I was learning to throw a knife, to shoot a gun, and I think it scared her. I think _I_ scared her. But I wasn’t about to stop—I kept thinking that just around the next corner would be that vital bit I needed.

You can guess what happened next. I struck out on my own. Continued travelling. Like I said, I had some hunter friends, and I had some money in my pocket, so I could usually find a place to stay. I wasn’t sleeping in the streets, not at first. But sometimes I wouldn’t get to the right town when I was supposed to be there, and I had to find a place to stay. That’s what happened to me.

She seemed like a really nice person. I guess I should have known. I seem like a really nice person, too, but I’m not. The thing is—I think she _was_ nice. I think she was trying very hard to be a nice person.

She cried when she bit me.

I think she didn’t know what she was doing, when she offered me her blood. I think I didn’t know either, or I would have resisted. Maybe I did resist. Maybe I’m remembering wrong. We don’t remember our own births, and this was my second conception and second birth, so maybe you can forgive me for not remembering.

Her blood was hot and sweet. That I do remember.

I took a man first. He was watching me from the bus station that morning, called me names. You can guess what they were. I saw him again that night, and that was it. He was flattered at first. He thought I was flirting. I made it fast. I am a cruel thing, but my cruelty is swift. When I had fed and was full, I went to find her, my Maker with her sweet, hot blood. But she was gone. Vanished. I wandered the streets searching for her. I think I fed again, because I was hungry, and then I was not.

It was one of my hunter friends that found me, in the end. I was afraid of nothing anymore. I did not hide, from them, from anyone. I told them. It did not take long before they came for me. A machete through my neck, and here I was, in Purgatory.

She was waiting for me, my Maker. She must have been, this is what I tell myself, because I met her almost at once. She apologized. Sank to her knees and begged my forgiveness. I’m so sorry, you were so young. A cruel song. I hissed at her. Our blood days were over, and we were only hungry souls, but we could be hungry together. And so we were, my Maker and I. Oh, if we had still been in the world! We might have been so beautiful, and so terrible. We were not happy, but we were not sad, and that is something in itself.

We are nearing the point now where my story intersects with the one you know, the one about the hunter and the angel who went to Purgatory, and met the vampire. That vampire who was not me, and who was not my beautiful Maker, but who was kind like her. They are abominations. There is no place for kindness in us. We are cruel, terrible beings. We are not kind. I told her this, my Maker, and she agreed. After all, she made me, and I am a cruel and terrible thing. Perhaps that was her doing. Perhaps it was not.

We smelled them, the hunter and the angel, when they arrived. They smelled like blood, a smell we had started to forget, the way we started to forget the world before. And the angel glowed like a beacon light. We tracked them. We were helpless not to. And when we came upon him, the hunter, I howled. I knew him. He was my first hunter, from before I knew what a hunter was. He was the hunter who let the angel take my father from me. I should not have been surprised, I suppose, because we could smell the angel, we could all smell the angel on him. But I howled and I flew at him and his blade whickered through the air, and that was the first time.

There is no end in Purgatory. We are only hungry souls. We hunt, we are hunted, we are killed, we are reborn. There is no end, and no escape. Not for us. When I return, we hunt him again. This time I let him see me, to see what I’ve become. I suppose I blame him, at least in part. But he does not recognize me. I was only a child when he last saw me, after all. He raised his blade, and that was the second time.

I was more careful after that. We followed him at a distance, the scent of his blood inflaming us. Once, we were so maddened by it that we fell upon a werewolf. We tore her apart. When she was reborn, she did the same for us. I was not angry. That is Purgatory. That is the wheel of a monster’s unlife in this place. And that was the third time.

They came to each other, the hunter with the blood-smell and the angel with the beacon-light. I could not tell you how long it was before they met again. Time ran together for us, for everyone. But they found each other. I watched their reunion from the shadows. My Maker begged me to stay away. _Look_ , I told her, pointing to the hunter. _I bet his blood is warm and sweet._ I did not tell her it was the angel I was hunting, that it was the angel I wanted. I used her bloodlust to keep her with me. I am a cruel thing, but even a cruel thing cannot abide loneliness.

She left me, my Maker, when she saw the angel. _He sent me here_ , she told me, whispering. _Because I was my Mother’s child, after all._ _You were my final sin._ I was not surprised. But she ran, she ran from me, from my hunter, from my angel. And I was alone. But I had finally found what I was searching for, the creature who wore my father, the angel who once wore me.

There’s nothing angelic in me now, and no kindness left. I followed them, and I bided my time. There is nothing but time here. I did not expect the end of their journey. I did not expect the hunter to become the hunter-vampire, for him to take the vampire’s soul into his body. I did not expect the swirling blue light, like the grace of an angel, which pulled the hunter-vampire out of Purgatory. And I did not expect my angel to stay behind, but stay he did, and after the pulsing light faded, he knelt there for a long time. Perhaps he cried. I do not know. I kept my distance.

And now we come to the end of my story. I follow my angel now. I keep watch from high in the trees. If he sees me, he does not let on. Soon, I think, I will fall to him. But it is not his death I want, not anymore. I have new plans. New goals. I will see if he recognizes me. And then I will whisper in his ear. I will demand a favor.

I want a ride out. And he owes me.


End file.
